For Teachers
Research on culturally responsive teaching suggests three primary teacher actions influenced by a culturally responsive perspective: your curriculum planning, your use of methods and pedagogy and your interactions with students, their families, and the community more broadly. While there is no "easy as 1-2-3" method to become a culturally responsive teacher, read below for ways to develop your curriculum, pedagogy and relationships towards being culturally responsive.
Keep in mind the interconnection and interaction of these three teacher actions. A teacher can have a responsive curriculum, but if that curriculum is taught to a students through lecture and what Freire describes as a "banking pedagogy," one can imagine the mixed feelings students will have as they are simply being told about their history or their community. Similarly, if a teacher uses constructivist methods with an irrelevant curriculum, one could also imagine the problems with classroom management that teacher may experience with youth who don't care about what they are learning. Finally, even the best relationships will crumble if students learn things that are irrelevant or in a way that treats them like un-intelligent empty vessels in class.
Keep in mind the interconnection and interaction of these three teacher actions. A teacher can have a responsive curriculum, but if that curriculum is taught to a students through lecture and what Freire describes as a "banking pedagogy," one can imagine the mixed feelings students will have as they are simply being told about their history or their community. Similarly, if a teacher uses constructivist methods with an irrelevant curriculum, one could also imagine the problems with classroom management that teacher may experience with youth who don't care about what they are learning. Finally, even the best relationships will crumble if students learn things that are irrelevant or in a way that treats them like un-intelligent empty vessels in class.